Responding to a tweet posted in early April by Pete Hegseth, the US « Secretary of War », threatening to send Iran « back to the Stone Age, » the Iranian embassy in South Africa replied with this short but firm comment, rich in potential diplomatic solutions:

“At a time when you where still in caves searching for fire, we were inscribing human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder. We endured the storm of Alexander the Great and the Mongol invasions and remained; because Iran is not just a country, it is a civilization.« 

History

Cyrus II (the Great) was the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 552 BC. It was his capture of Babylon in 539 BC that inaugurated the imperial era of Persia. By ending the Babylonian empire, which had until then ruled Western Asia, Cyrus founded an empire stretching from India in the East to Carthage in the West, and from the Caucasus and the Danube in the North to Ethiopia in the South.

With 5.5 million km² of territory, the Persian Empire had approximately 50 million inhabitants, representing 40% of the world’s population. The Persian Empire is the earliest of the Indo-European empires.

With its 20 provincial governors (satraps), its decentralized mode of organization sometimes served as a model for the Greek and Roman empires, and obviously for those of the Anglo-Saxons, the French, the Spanish, etc.

The founding act of the Persian Empire was the publication of the famous « edict » of King Cyrus, a copy of which, engraved in cuneiform characters on a terracotta cylinder, was found in Babylon in 1879. It is kept in the British Museum in London.

This edict is of unparalleled value, as it constitutes the first declaration of human rights in human history. Through this edict, Cyrus the Great abolished forced labor and solemnly proclaimed equal rights for all members of the empire, as well as freedom of worship and belief for all individuals. The fact that the Iranian embassy responded in this way is therefore very interesting. Of course, the honor of Iran’s great civilization scoffs at the Trump administration’s blatant ignorance.

But at the same time, by invoking the Cyrus cylinder, Iran, drawing on a higher concept, extends an olive branch for a negotiated solution and, implicitly, for the possibility of a shared future once again.

Let’s see why

• Although archaeologists and historians specializing in the Near East generally reject these interpretations as anachronistic, the cylinder was adopted as a symbol by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who presented it as the « first charter of human rights, » and then exhibited in Tehran in 1971 to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the Iranian Empire.
• That same year, the UN translated it into all its official languages and recognized it as a precursor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its return to Iran in 2010 was a major event commemorated in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cited it as a source of inspiration guiding the struggle for the oppressed. Three years later, the cylinder was presented and praised in the United States as a symbol of freedom. More recently, on November 6, 2025, the 43rd UNESCO General Conference unanimously recognized the Cyrus Cylinder (still considered the world’s first declaration of human rights) as a global symbol of freedom, justice, and respect for cultural diversity.
• Relations between Iranians and Jews date back to antiquity. One of the episodes most celebrated in Iranian identity is the liberation of the Jews from Babylon by Cyrus the Great, an act recorded and engraved on the famous cylinder seal, a testament to openness and tolerance. The Bible, moreover, offers a very favorable interpretation of Cyrus’s reign, which the Book of Ezra presents as the one that enabled the Jewish people’s « return to Zion » after their captivity in Babylon. The Jewish community in Iran is estimated today to number between 8,000 and 12,000 people, making it the largest in the Middle East after Israel, although its numbers have declined sharply since 1979 (around 100,000 before the revolution). In early April, guided by AI without human verification, Israel bombed the Tehran synagogue. The Israeli army expressed its « regret » for the damage caused by this nighttime strike, which it claimed targeted a « senior Iranian military commander. »

Dialogue of Civilizations

To evoke the Cyrus cylinder is therefore to extend, from a higher standpoint, an olive branch: the prospect of an intercultural, inter-religious and inter-civilizational dialogue, laying the foundations for a peaceful solution to many otherwise insoluble conflicts, both within the country (with the supporters of a return of the Pahlavi dynasty) and outside (with Israel, Christians and the West in general).

For millennia at the crossroads of the Silk Roads, the DNA of Iranian civilization has not been terrorism and destabilization, but rather a fight for justice, respect and openness to others.

One year after the Iranian celebrations of the Cyrus Cylinder, in 1971, the Austrian professor Hans Köchler, president of the International Progress Organization (IPO), a close friend and collaborator of the Schiller Institute and its founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, took up his pen to propose to UNESCO the organization of

« an international congress on the subject of the problems arising from the dialogue between different civilizations. »

For years, Hans Köchler, through countless presentations, lectures, and symposia worldwide, particularly in Iran, did exceptional work to popularize the concept, before it was taken up and supported by the Schiller Institute.

Under the auspices of the Austrian and Senegalese presidencies, a major symposium was held in 1974 in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1997, in opposition to the « Clash of Civilizations » theory, the thesis of geopolitician Bernard Lewis popularized by Samuel P. Huntington, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami placed dialogue between civilizations at the heart of his mandate. It was at his suggestion that the UN, in 1998, declared 2001 the « Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. »

The concept is back on the table today. Will we be able to adapt to the Iranian DNA or will we remain in the moral « Stone Age »?